Thirteen newly minted DMCPs--Destination Management Certified Professionals--are the first to gain certification in a program intended to enhance destination management professionalism. ADME hopes the new certification will serve to weed out less-qualified DMCs as it raises professionalism overall.  

"Destination management often has been the poor stepchild of the meetings industry,"said Ilene Reinhart, president of Los Angeles-based Access California and one of the new DMCPs. "This is a way for us to raise the level of recognition of what destination management professionals contribute to the success of programs.

"Created and managed by the Association of Destination Management Executives, an oversized version of the certification test was administered first to the 13 members of ADME's own certification committee, who thus were "grandfathered in" as the industry's first DMCPs. The committee members' test actually served as a further step in refining the process for DMCs at large.

Each committee member contributed 30 questions, and the entire committee then sat for a test nearly 400 questions long. The actual official DMCP test--the first of which will be administered during ADME's annual conference in January in Nashville-- will be winnowed down to 150 questions.